Ukraine political unrest

I'm sure most people are aware that Ukraine is currently experiencing some social unrest. Recently, a tape was released of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who to install into a new Ukrainian government. An article by the WSWS summarizes it best I think, and this is particularly frightening:

Psaki also addressed Nuland’s and Pyatt’s discussion of which forces Washington would allow to come to power in Kiev. In the telephone call, the two discuss plans to install an oligarchic regime working closely with fascist gangs. They agree that boxer Vitali Klitschko, who leads the German-backed UDAR party, should stay out of power and “do his political homework and stuff.”
They conclude that Arseniy Yatsenyuk of jailed billionaire oligarch Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party should rule, conferring regularly with Oleh Tyahnybok of the fascist Svoboda Party, whose members and neo-Nazi allies provide most of the thugs fighting riot police in Kiev.

I did some reading on the Svoboda Party, and sure enough, they have direct neo-Nazi ties. If you don't like socialists, I found an NYT article to satisfy all your centrist needs. There's also a transcript of the conversation here.

It looks like the U.S. and the E.U. are fighting over who gets the bone which is Ukraine. No surprise here, this has been happening since the turn of the 20th century. But I think the fact that White House administrators are still going around installing fascist-supported puppet regimes should give people pause who still believe that voting Democrats into office means something.

Seems similar to what some believe of Venezuala. . . Usually it seems that some know about these activities in advance.

This is a good point because they are four dogs in this fight it seems; the US, the EU, the Russians, and right wing Ukrainians who hold no truck with any of the former three. Here wanting your country free from foreign influence is being portrayed as a bad, bad thing.

It all depends on which way the army jumps as always. it seems they are sitting it out while the police (interior troops) and the protestors knock lumps out of each other. Another factor is how many more arms can the protestors grab?

This is a good point because they are four dogs in this fight it seems; the US, the EU, the Russians, and right wing Ukrainians who hold no truck with any of the former three. Here wanting your country free from foreign influence is being portrayed as a bad, bad thing.

It all depends on which way the army jumps as always. it seems they are sitting it out while the police (interior troops) and the protestors knock lumps out of each other. Another factor is how many more arms can the protestors grab?

Nothing I've read has made it clear to me what, if any, significant differences exist between the EU and US objectives, not that there wouldn't be some.

It strikes me as yet more Cold War Redux, in a rather straightforward way. Ukraine's president had two offers to entertain--join the EU, in essence, vs join the CIS or whatever it's called these days. Putin made a more attractive offer, to the chagrin of a couple of opposition parties who either like the EU and/or hate the Russians.

That the latter almost immediately resorted to aggressive street rallies suggests a fully accurate survey would reveal fairly even breakdowns of public opinion on all sides of the issue. Same with Venezuela--the Chavistas have lost their star quarterback, so now the opposition is seeing an opportunity to force various issues by stirring up trouble.

If US diplomacy is happening in characteristic style, it won't much matter to them what the opposition actually wants, as long as it includes this apparently valuable piece of economic real estate not falling back into the Russian orbit.

Originally Posted by Ptah

No history, no exposition, no anecdote or argument changes the invariant: we are all human beings, and some humans are idiots.

The degeneration reminds me of Syria a few years ago, though I know there's a lot of differences. One similarity is that Russia is backing the horse in charge and that's an important one. Given Ukraine's history and proximity I'd expect Russia to be a lot more intransigent about this conflict than Syria. But does the EU really have a foreign policy? That's an honest question - I'm ignorant on that one. Can a group of sovereign nations have a coherent policy in a situation like this? Ultimately, Europe and its leaders rely way too much on Russia for energy to care more about this than Putin does.

Perhaps we'll see two nations out of this, Uk and Raine (jk), the western Ukrainian speaking and the Eastern Russian speaking, each gravitating to different spheres of influence.

The degeneration reminds me of Syria a few years ago, though I know there's a lot of differences. One similarity is that Russia is backing the horse in charge and that's an important one. Given Ukraine's history and proximity I'd expect Russia to be a lot more intransigent about this conflict than Syria. But does the EU really have a foreign policy? That's an honest question - I'm ignorant on that one. Can a group of sovereign nations have a coherent policy in a situation like this? Ultimately, Europe and its leaders rely way too much on Russia for energy to care more about this than Putin does.

Like any political collectivity, the EU's decisions as a body will reflect gradations of influence between its leading and lesser participants. The people I've seen refer to it as "Merkelreich" have a point.

There is an EU continental parliament, but perhaps more significantly the general point of view I've gotten from opinionated Europeans I've discussed it with is that the entire political infrastructure of the EU is mostly a front for the people who run the European Central Bank (so, in other words, Germans), which is the kind of entity that would make Fed-hating Ron Paul voters in the US pee their pants in terror.

Ukraine is no slouch in the energy department itself, either. Major exports include coal, oil, and natural gas. Plus Second World countries are an important source of cheap labor to the stronger economies of northern/western Europe, similar to how US companies rely on Third World labor.

Originally Posted by Ptah

No history, no exposition, no anecdote or argument changes the invariant: we are all human beings, and some humans are idiots.

This is a good point because they are four dogs in this fight it seems; the US, the EU, the Russians, and right wing Ukrainians who hold no truck with any of the former three. Here wanting your country free from foreign influence is being portrayed as a bad, bad thing.